Captain Evil 😷 #freeHK

[Captain Evil 😷 #freeHK @CaptEvilr]

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis

[Victims of Communism @VoCommunism]

Remember the victims of communism.

[Planet Of Memes @PlanetOfMemes]

@elonmusk 🤦‍♂️

[Magatte Wade @magattew]

When people tell me socialism is “African,” I want to know which Africa they are talking about.

The Africa I keep finding in our own history looks very different from the one described in Marxist slogans.

Medieval Nubia had private land sale documents with named buyers, witnesses, plot descriptions, and prices in gold. The Wangara built commercial networks from Senegal to northern Nigeria. In Kawar, many salt workers owned their own pits, and wealthy owners hired wage laborers paid in salt.

That does not sound like Marxism to me.

What sounds foreign is the idea that Africans must hand power to a political class that claims to own everything “for the people.” That idea came from Karl Marx, a German man sitting in Europe.

So did many of the colonial labor codes our leaders kept after independence.

They changed the flag, kept the systems, and called it liberation.

Our ancestors owned things, built things, and traded across this continent long before anyone arrived to tell them they needed a state to do it for them.

That is the Africa I come from. That is the one I am fighting to get back.

[The Rational Animal 🤔 @theobjectivist]

You chose 1973 as your baseline. Let me tell you what happened in 1973.

The dollar fully floated after Nixon severed gold. The first Pell Grants were awarded. The HMO Act was signed. Your chart does not start before the crisis, Bernie. It starts at the scene of the crime.

Healthcare up 35x because Medicare, CON laws, and the AMA cartel run medicine.
Homes up 13x because zoning makes building illegal and the Fed prints.
Rent up 15x because price controls and zoning strangle supply.
Tuition up 23x because federal loans gave colleges a blank check.

General prices rose 7x in that span. Everything government controls rose 13x to 35x. Everything it leaves alone got cheaper.

You are not the prosecutor of this case. You are the defendant.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Vietnam cut poverty from 70% to under 2% while the Communist Party stayed in total control.

After reunification they ran a fully centralized economy and got famine.

In 1986 the Party launched Đổi Mới, broke up the collective farms, and let households keep what they grew.
They opened the country to foreign investment and private business.

GDP per capita went from under $700 to nearly $4,500 and growth averaged over 6% a year for more than 3 decades.

One of the fastest poverty reductions in modern history came from reducing central planning, not expanding it.

Commies can prevent starvation simply by not doing commie things.

Every poor country that still refuses to do this is choosing the famine.

[Victims of Communism @VoCommunism]

In 1968, the people of Czechoslovakia took to the streets to overthrow their communist oppressors. The Soviet Union responded with tanks.

Remember the heroes. Remember the Prague Spring.

[chaotic memes @memechaotic]

This would heal me.

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

You hear that socialism is a "working-class" movement but there is a reason you see far more socialists on an Ivy League campus than a community college.

In reality, socialists are the children of upper middle class aristocrats and intellectuals who larp as proles (and fascists are proles who cosplay as aristocrats).

An interview for @johnstossel and Leyla Taghiyeva on Stossel TV

[Spike Cohen @RealSpikeCohen]

Harper Downey was a newborn when she had to undergo emergency bowel surgery to survive e. coli and sepsis.

The morning after the surgery, doctors found her liver was injured on a scan, a complication of the surgery she'd just had.

Instead of admitting the complication, hospital staff accused Harper's parents of abuse, even though the operating surgeon had examined Harper's liver during surgery and said it was completely normal, and she hadn't left the hospital since.

Thankfully, the family court case has been dropped, but prosecutors are still threatening to put Harper's father Taylor in prison for abuse.

We're going to get these bogus charges dropped, as we've done for so many other innocent people. In the comments, I'll tell you how you can help in the next post in this thread.

[Magatte Wade @magattew]

A lot of intellectuals get nervous around free markets because free people make the planner less important.

If a woman in Senegal can open a shop without begging ten offices for permission, hire two people, serve customers, and keep enough of what she earns to grow, she has already solved the problem the conference people wanted to manage for her.

The Marxist professor can still write papers about her, but he cannot design her future from a hotel ballroom.

That is why big government is so attractive to certain people.

It turns their theories into power, and every poor person becomes another argument for giving the planner more authority.

The question I care about is simple:

Does the system let ordinary people build their way out, or does it keep them dependent on powerful people who enjoy being needed?

[Secular Pro-Life @secularprolife]

PC: You just want to punish women for having sex.
PL: Do you think men should have to pay child support?
PC: Child support isn't about punishing men. It's about taking care of children.
PL: Man, that's a really good point.

[Captain Evil 😷 #freeHK @CaptEvilr]

@magattew I agree that free markets would improve the situation in countries whose people are fleeing but how do people in immigration countries help those in emigration countries become more economically free if the people don't seek it themselves?

[WeRateDogs @dog_rates]

This is Nymeria. She is demonstrating the rare compact zoomies. Ideal for situations where you don't have much room, but still must zoom. 13/10

[Kristan Hawkins @KristanHawkins]

A 30-week baby boy smiling in the womb the second he hears his dad’s voice.

Technology, science, and plain common sense all prove the exact same thing: these precious babies are human beings who know and recognize their parents long before birth.

Absolutely beautiful. Science is pro-life.

[Captain Evil 😷 #freeHK @CaptEvilr]

Las maletas de los pasajeros iban cayéndose.

[Captain Evil 😷 #freeHK @CaptEvilr]

@tocumenaero deben hacer un entrenamiento para los choferes del bus Inter terminal. Me subí al BP202 por la puerta de atrás porque el chofer no quería dejar abordar por la de adelante, paró en medio de la T1 a conversar con otros choferes y venía manejando tan rápido que

[Giga Based Dad @GigaBasedDad]

She gets it